Sunrise
by Zilley
Summary: McCoy helps Spock with some soul (katra?) searching while watching a sunrise on an alien world. Set sometime not long after the fal-tor-pan and the events of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movies.


NOTES: I haven't written anything in ages. Then a new year began and the Ghost of New Year's Resolutions Past came back to haunt me, so I sat down and wrote... this.

It is (loosely) self-edited and unbetaed, and mostly written at ridiculously-early-o'clock, so please forgive any errors and/or humiliating writing stumbles.

This was going to be a 'New Year' story; it ended up being a 'sunrise' one. Close enough.

Thank you for reading.

-/^\\-

The figure on the balcony is silhouetted against an ever-brightening purple sky. The wind whips his hair and he wraps his arms more tightly across his body.

"Spock, you shouldn't be out here".

His eyes are fixed on the horizon. "Your concern is noted, Doctor, but I shall remain."

You had hoped the _fal-tor-pan_ would infuse the Vulcan with some good old human common sense, but you suspect any possible remnants of your psyche were swiftly removed during Spock's re-education.

You head back inside (where it's warm, _dammit_ ) and find Jim sprawled on the wide couch in the communal room of your suite, holding a padd some distance in front of him. You never did replace the glasses you gave him for his birthday. You sigh. Today you need to help your other friend.

Jim looks up as you cross in front of him, his expression a wordless question. You answer in kind, a sharp, silent nod toward the man outside. Jim understands. Well, you think he understands. Sometimes he looks from you to Spock, from Spock to you, and his eyes are searching for an answer to a question he doesn't know how to ask.

He knows, on some level, that you and Spock are connected in a way that you weren't before. You don't think he feels jealousy or resentment—his relief at having Spock back, alive and at his side, trumps anything else—but you both know Spock would have given his _katra_ to Jim, had the choice been available to him.

And _you_ don't feel resentful about that. You've never been envious of their friendship. Spock trusted you enough to take care of his _soul_ (inconvenient as the gift may have been). The reverence bestowed upon you from every Vulcan you've met since that moment attests to the value of Spock's trust.

Jim was still pivotal in restoring you both, but he can't ask about any of it, and you can't tell him. Neither of you has the words.

So, he doesn't ask, and you don't try to explain the inexplicable. Part of you wonders how long he will endure the _not knowing_ before he forces a question into existence; part of you hopes he never does, but you know Jim better than that. One day he will find a way to ask, and you will have to prepare a satisfactory answer. Perhaps Spock can help with that. (Ha! You've got a better chance of having Jim come for his next physical voluntarily.)

Now is not the time, however, and Jim sits silently watching you enter Spock's room and exiting with a thick blanket. He smiles when he sees you with it, and you remember how he has recently teased you for what he perceives as your increased protectiveness toward Spock (you resolve to consider the truth of that later).

Without thinking, you lift an eyebrow at him, and notice his expression rapidly change.

Your memory of the time Spock's _katra_ inhabited your mind is sketchy at best. The memories you do have can't be replied upon to be your own. But you do know that it bothered Jim to see Spock wearing your features, to see you sitting at Spock's science station scanning for anomalies as if you were born to it (you weren't). The doctor in you wonders if that business all those years ago with Janice Lester has something to do with it. Jim was definitely less amenable to the science of body/mind transference after that.

You don't have the time now to psychoanalyse your captain, so you settle for a cheeky smile and quip about Vulcans turning into icicles before you brave the chill air out on the balcony once more.

Spock has not moved a muscle, which is stupid, because he is shivering now.

You drop the blanket over his shoulders and wrap it closed around him, fussing like the mother hen Jim thinks you are.

"Thank you, Doctor," Spock says, and you know he means it because his statement was accompanied neither by a scowl or a lecture on superior Vulcan metabolism.

You lean your elbows on the balcony railing, following Spock's gaze out to the horizon. "Why are you out here, Spock?"

"I am watching the sunrise." His tone says, _obviously, Doctor_.

"You can do that from inside, you know. Through that fancy device we like to call a 'window'."

He shifts uncomfortably, as if he is preparing to say something slightly unVulcan. "The… experience is not the same."

You let that pass for now (you must be going soft). "You know, Jim always struck me as the romantic, sunrise-watching guy, not you." You twist to look inside, where Jim is now clearly sound asleep, his head lolling off to one side, the padd about to drop from his loose fingers.

You turn back to Spock. "And Jim's not the slightest bit interested in Sotra Two's purple sunrise."

Spock lets out a breath, and you see the air expel in a little puff.

"I have never before seen a sunrise, Doctor."

You parse that sentence in your mind at least three times before you say, "Sorry, what?"

"I have nev—"

"Yes, I heard you." You turn so that your back is to the railing and regard the Vulcan full-on. "I just find it hard to believe that in all your life, on Vulcan, on Earth, and all the planets you've visited, that you haven't at some point seen a sunrise. I mean, not even in the name of science?"

Spock brings his hands up in the characteristic steeple shape you have seen countless times, then almost immediately separates them and turns them over, palms up, looking from one to the other as if seeing them for the first time.

"The Spock you knew did; I have not."

The statement renders you momentarily speechless in its simultaneous complexity and simplicity.

After your experience of hosting Spock's _katra_ , you believed you had (literally) gained some working knowledge of Spock's mind. You _knew_ him on a level almost no other humans have known another being. And now, Spock would have you believe that the man you know—knew—is no more.

"Are you telling me that you consider yourself to be a different person, a different _entity_ , from the man who walked into that reactor room?"

Spock's eyes search yours. "I do not know how you could deem us to be the same."

You sense a question in his words. He seems uncertain.

You flick your eyes for a moment back to Jim. You think of everything he has endured and sacrificed in the process of restoring Spock to life. As frustrated as he has sometimes been with Spock's patchy recollection of personal memories, he has steadfastly believed that Spock would eventually return to him in full. Spock's newly revealed _truth_ would crush him.

But is it the truth?

"Spock, I carried your soul." You wave away his objection with an immediate amendment. "Your _katra_. What was placed in me by the man who died in that reactor room was replaced in you. The same sou— _katra_."

He looks at you with imploring eyes. "Exactly, Doctor. The _katra_ , the knowledge, the memories, the experiences are implanted." He looks away, back to the sunrise. "None of those things belong to me."

You think you understand a little. You have encountered amnesia in your years as a medical practitioner and have witnessed many cases where the memory has returned. But each of those people had a sense of self before and after. Memories would return slowly, like layers peeling from an onion; or sometimes in chunks, like large pieces of icebergs dropping into the sea. And the person would add those pieces to themselves, knowing each piece was theirs, part of their own whole.

Genesis Spock was a blank page, a being without _self_. He was nothing until he was Spock, the Spock imparted to him from you, via an ancient priestess in a ceremony so rare, so unheard of, that the Vulcans could only speak of it in terms of mysticism rather than fact.

There are days, lots of them, where you struggle to believe it was real yourself. And you were there, an integral part of the process.

Spock, ever self-evaluating, has tried to decipher the sum of his life through logic. There is no logic in mysticism. You know that when Spock can find no answers in logic, he reluctantly turns to the side of himself he has never really trusted. And his humanity rarely provides answers that would give him any sense of peace.

The look he is giving you now is one of expectation and hope. And trust. You realise he has utter faith that you can supply him with an answer that will help him reconcile himself. Perhaps he has faith in your humanity where he has none in his own. Perhaps he is merely seeking guidance from one who is _complete_ , to one who is not.

And you remember something you heard him say many times in the years you have known him, something so fundamentally Vulcan that you wonder how he has failed to recall it himself.

"Spock," you say, "a difference that makes no difference—"

"—is no difference," he finishes for you.

You see him mull that over, as if to say, _surely it cannot be that simple_.

You point to the nearly fully risen sun on the horizon. "Every day the Sotran sun rises over this planet. Every day the same, every day different. If we returned here in, say, three months, where would the sun rise?"

"There," says Spock, pointing further east, "and the sunrise will occur twenty-seven point three standard minutes earlier."

"So, watching that sunrise would be a different experience from the one we are seeing today?"

"Not significantly, Doctor." His brows draw together in an eloquent frown and you know he has caught on. "It is still the same sun."

You indulge in an enigmatic grin, knowing that anything further you could say would be surplus to requirements. Something in the way Spock straightens his back tells you that he has enough material to draw his own conclusions.

And perhaps you have enough as well. Maybe not enough for a whole answer for Jim. You suspect you will never have that.

It doesn't matter now, because the sun has risen fully, casting a purplish glow on the angles of Spock's face. His features soften considerably, and he turns to you.

"I am pleased I saw the sunrise today. It was a pleasurable experience."

"Yes, Spock. Yes, it was."


End file.
